The Trump administration has released its proposed Fiscal Year 2027 budget, and it does not spell good news for LGBTQ+ people.

The Human Rights Campaign is sounding the alarm on the budget’s proposed cuts to federal HIV services, transgender health care, LGBTQ+ housing services, general civil rights infrastructure, and more.

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“Presidential budgets are a reflection of the nation’s values, and this budget shows how little this Administration values the lives of LGBTQ+ Americans despite their tremendous contribution to the American economy and society,” HRC President Kelley Robinson said in a statement.

HRC says the budget calls for almost $2 billion in cuts to HIV-specific services. Among the proposed cuts is the elimination of the Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS program (HOPWA), which the administration calls “outdated by focusing on housing low-income, homeless, and at-risk HIV-positive individuals, as the prognosis and medical care for HIV have significantly improved since the 1990s.”

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“The Budget proposes to defund programs that award Federal dollars to organizations that peddle divisive, woke identity politics,” it continued.

According to the proposal, examples of these “woke” politics include a $500,000 HOPWA grant in 2022 to fund the Neighborhood Center in San Francisco, which the administration describes as “an identity-politics-driven nonprofit that prioritizes ‘culturally responsive’ services and serves ‘non-English speaking newcomers’ over focusing on self-sufficiency.”

It also criticized a 2023 grant of $1.5 million to the Maui AIDS foundation, a so-called “radical nonprofit that hosts support groups for ‘young gay and bisexual men of color’ and supplies ‘safer sex kits,’ including condoms and lubrication.” It claimed the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, which received $1.5 million from HOPWA in 2023, was “discriminatory” due to its “‘racial equity principles’ in its hiring process.”

The administration also proposed eliminating housing and health services for trans people, including cutting $129 million from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in part because it has “pushed radical gender ideology onto children” by “funding a project at the Seattle Children’s Hospital titled, ‘Using Telehealth to Improve Access to Gender-Afrming Care for BIPOC and Rural Gender-Diverse Youth.'”

It also proposed eliminating the Fair Housing Initiatives Program (FHIP) because it “provides grants to woke nonprofits that promote radical equity policies” and has “funded partisan organizations… who deny the incontrovertible reality that there are two biological sexes, male and female.”

Other programs the administration ranted about in the budget proposal include “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, plus clinics that provide ‘gender affirming hormone therapy’ and other services to young patients”; Head Start centers that “promoted picture books about gay penguins, lessons on how to grow children’s ‘gender identity,’ and how to talk to toddlers about race”; and an FHIP audit in 2024 that found “organizations used their grants to promote equity, preferencing for example fair housing services for ‘Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer’ populations or populations with limited English proficiency.”

“The Budget no longer supports these radical left-leaning and wasteful programs,” the document declared.

HRC also decried funding cuts to a campus Pride Center and to DEI and anti-racism teacher training, as well as a $5 billion cut to National Institutes of Health programs that prioritize trans health research, HIV risk research, and other LGBTQ+-specific research.

The budget proposal is chock-full of lines slamming “woke” politics, “gender ideology,” and the “radical left,” continually slamming the Biden administration for focusing on equity and inclusion.

“From executive orders targeting trans people on day one to dismantling civil rights enforcement across the federal government, this Administration has been methodical about stripping away protections for people who need them most,” HRC president Robinson said.

“This budget is the next chapter. When you eliminate housing for people living with HIV, gut behavioral health grants, and defund fair housing protections, you leave entire communities without a safety net. Programs that support health, safety, and opportunity for all Americans aren’t ‘woke,’ they are essential to the promise of America.”

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